Spirit vs. Flesh [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. He was perfect. He was sinless. He lived a life of perfect obedience unto the Father. He was the Son of God. He's the Son of Man.

He died upon a cross so that anyone who trusts in Him would have His sacrifice applied as if you had made it, and would have His righteousness applied as if you had lived it. And there is no other way. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Unspeakable Joy as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Okay, you ready for some good news? Beloved, your right standing with God is not Jesus plus some of your own righteousness. Your place in God's family now and for all eternity and the inheritance, the spiritual inheritance that is yours is yours purely, wholly, fully because of what Christ has done and none of what you've done. We're in Philippians chapter 3 and we come to this passage which Paul here gets animated, emotional, angry, insistent, and passionate.

He reminds me in these verses sort of his temperament on a grander scale and his epistle to the Galatians where they'd had so much challenge of these Judaizers that were coming in and teaching this Jesus plus other things. Here Paul is not addressing a church that is just riddled with this kind of heresy but he is telling them you need to be on the lookout and we pick up reading at verse 2 of Philippians chapter 3. Look out for the dogs.

Look out for the evildoers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh.

Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings becoming like him in his death that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead."

Wow. C.S. Lewis in his famous Screwtape letters depicts a senior devil named Screwtape who is writing to a junior devil his nephew Wormwood. In chapter 25, Screwtape is giving Wormwood advice on how to lure his subject that would be Christian away from the pure gospel. Screwtape says, what we want if men become Christians at all is to keep them in a state of mind I call Christianity and, you know, Christianity and the crisis, Christianity and the new psychology, Christianity and the new order, Christianity and psychical research, Christianity and vegetarianism, Christianity and spelling reforms. If they must be Christians, let them at least be Christians with a difference.

Substitute for the faith itself some fashion with a Christian coloring. The temptation for us as Christians is not primarily that we would abandon God altogether. The temptation for most Christians is not that you be lured away from the gospel entirely.

The temptation is to add something to it. The temptation, Paul said was his concern to the Thessalonians, is that as Eve was tempted, you would be lured away from the simplicity and purity of the gospel. For a gospel that becomes even one percent diluted, mixed, or poisoned by something that's not the gospel is a gospel that is robbed of its power. And what happened is that in the early church, you see it intensely in the letter to the Galatians, but here in chapter three in Philippians, you see the same thing. There were teachers who were called Judaizers that were teaching essentially this. Yes, you're Christians by faith in Christ.

Yes, Jesus died for you. But if you want to be fully accepted and fully qualified, if you want to be totally included in the family of God, then you ought to also keep certain Jewish customs, maybe eating kosher food, keeping Sabbath festival in the right way, or in this particular case, or observing the Jewish practice of circumcision. The reason that this type of temptation comes is because it's primal.

It is innate within us. From the time that Adam and Eve fell into sin and they began hiding from God and hiding from one another, their deep longing, the question of the heart of broken humanity is what must I do to regain right standing? What must I do to be accepted? I know there's something wrong with me. What must I do?

What can I do? So when the first sons were born and Cain and Abel each brought their offerings to the Lord and the Lord showed favor and approval upon Abel's offering, but not Cain's, the rejection of it was too much for Cain. He so wants to be accepted, he rose up in bitterness and he killed his brother.

And so it goes on down through the line. Jacob steals his brother's blessing and Esau weeps bitterly and he says to his father, have you only one blessing? Where's my blessing father?

What must I do to be blessed? And he with an embittered soul wanted to kill his brother. And then Jacob has all these many sons and Joseph, the young one received his favor, but the other brothers see that they don't have the favor. Their father in their hearts cries, what must we do in order to be really included? And in their bitterness, they want to kill Joseph. And on and on it goes, the heart is so desperate to know what must I do to be one of the ones who is included in the inner circle of favor that we're longing for it. So when Judaizers come and they began to announce a message that says, here's what you do, become like the Jewish people, even though you're a Gentile Christian and practice circumcision and you'll be amongst the special ones.

And we're lured in by that. It's interesting though, most people and even the Jewish people would tend to associate the command for circumcision with Moses and Mosaic law. It actually began with Abraham. And Paul speaks of this in Romans chapter four, saying Abraham received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised so that the righteousness would be counted to them as well. So really this rite of circumcision began as a sign of God's grace, covenantal grace to Abraham.

It became associated with Moses and the law and the Jewish tradition as a sign of the covenant, a sign of being part of the family of God. And during what we call the intertestamental period, that time in which the Bible is silent and there's not any mention from the Bible is what's happening for 300 years before Christ, we nonetheless have history about what was going on with the Jewish people. And one of the things that happened according to Maccabean literature is that under the terrifying reign of Antiochus the fourth, the Jewish people were so persecuted and one of the ways they were persecuted was there was a prohibition of circumcision and babies that were circumcised were to be killed along with their mothers.

So I mentioned this bit of history to make this point. On the one hand, it's quite understandable that circumcision could become a big focus for the people. It is something that had begun with Abraham. It was something continued with the traditions of Moses and it was something that they had been persecuted over as a sign of their identity. And so you could see how it would be an apt symbol for Judaizers to use to say to these new Gentile converts, yes, you have Jesus, but since you're not Jewish, you also need to practice this part of Jewish identity if you want to be really, really included and know for sure that you're fully accepted. And Paul says, no.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Have you ever thought that joy is a delight reserved for those who have no problems? Or have you ever assumed that some people are just born with a joyful personality?

If so, get ready for some good news. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit available to all in Christ, no matter the circumstances of life. Though Paul was in jail when he wrote his epistle to the Philippians, he spoke of joy 16 times. No matter what you're going through, you too can discover the secret to unspeakable joy as Pastor Alan Wright leads you through a life-building exploration of Philippians. When you make a gift to Sharing the Light Ministries today, we'll send you the new CD album, The Secret of Unspeakable Joy, as our way of saying thank you for your partnership. Your gifts are the only way we're able to continue broadcasting the message of grace all over the nation. Happiness may rise and fall with happenstance, but joy is ever-present in the Spirit.

So become a partner today and discover joy like never before. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And in fact, in the matter, he is emotional, he is adamant, he's angry. You first see this in the language that he's using at verse two, look out for the dogs, evildoers, those who mutilate the flesh. Dogs, usually a term reserved for Gentiles, that here Paul seems to be applying to these Jewish Judaizers.

The dog was a despised animal. Evildoers, think about this, brothers and sisters. Paul is speaking to people, they haven't murdered anybody. These people haven't committed heinous crimes, they're just saying you ought to get circumcised. And he calls them evildoers. He's not just saying, well, this is a little bit of a problem, we ought to correct a little bit of theology here.

He's calling them dogs and evildoers. And then he says, and they are ones who mutilate the flesh. It's such overblown language, because this circumcision is not a mutilation, but he's overblowing this language.

More on the word there for mutilation in just a moment. He also uses figures of speech here, that Paul doesn't normally, he doesn't normally follow the way of Greek argument, but here he does, using figures of speech that would have been familiar to those that had heard philosophers in Greek argue. And the first thing that you see is the repetition of this same word in the ESV, is look out, look out, look out. It is a Greek word, it just means to be aware, be aware, beware, be on the lookout for this, be on the lookout for this, be on the lookout for this. It's threefold repetition shows his fervency. And then there's a play on words that he uses here that's important that we miss in our English translation, because the word for circumcision is paratomi. And Paul calls these Judaizers the mutilators of the flesh, and the word for that is catatomi.

So it's a play on words, instead of the paratomi, which is circumcision, because they're catatomi. This is like cutting deep and lacerating, and you see the language he's using. And also, you should know this, uses alliteration, which brings emphasis to what he's saying here. Sometimes in English where you repeat something in one sentence and numbers of words start with the same sound, and it brings this emphasis to it like that. And that's what Paul's doing here.

The word for dogs in Greek is kounas, evildoers is kakus, and mutilators is katatomen. So you read this, and he's like these kounas, kakus, katatomen. And then Paul does something that he doesn't do very often, only a couple places in the New Testament we see in his writing. He goes into this autobiographical sort of boasting.

It's like in another place where he says, I'm out of my mind for even having to say these things to you. But he begins to list just how Jewish he is, just how by their standards he would be deemed righteous. What he's saying is that, Judaizers, I could preach your sermon better than you are if I wanted to. Nobody would be in more of a position to insist on people becoming more Jewish than I, because he's saying, look at me. He says, I was born in Judaism. I wasn't converted. I'm born in this.

I was circumcised properly on the eighth day as an infant. I am Jewish by birth and by genealogy. I can tell you the tribe, I came from tribe of Benjamin. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews. I speak Hebrew. My parents speak Hebrew. My family was Hebrew.

They're Hebrew of Hebrews from the tribe of Benjamin. I'm thoroughly Jewish. And you think these Judaizers are talking about keeping the little laws. Let me tell you what, I was a Pharisee. The Pharisees were more meticulous about keeping the law than any other sect within Judaism. He said, I'm a Pharisee. I'm a Pharisee, and I was the best of the Pharisees.

And he says, not only that, he said, you think that these people are zealous for the cause? I'll tell you how zealous I was. I was so zealous over my Judaism. I was persecuting the Christians. I was killing the Christians. You can't be more zealous than that. You see what he's saying? He says, I dare the Judaizers to compare their fleshly righteousness to mine.

If we were going to wage war over who had the greatest credentials of their Judas, their Hebraic faith and Hebraic roots, I would win that battle every time. But he's saying, but I count all of that when it comes to my salvation. I count it as rubbish, as nothing. It's worthless. Why is so Paul mad about this?

Why is he so insistent? You got to understand that Paul is not so much saying that circumcision is wrong. He's not saying it's a sin to be circumcised or have your child circumcised. He's not saying it's not a sin to practice circumcision. He's saying the sin, the error, the evil is when you attach a significance to it that is actually void of any real power.

Let me see if I can explain this. Sometimes when I'll go and preach somewhere else and I am in someone else's church or their ministry, perhaps we've done a conference, I'll stay over the weekend occasionally and I'll preach. Well, I would like to know in that situation, I'd like to know a little bit more about the culture of that church. I'd like to know, for example, I asked the pastor, I said, what do you wear when you preach? Do you wear jeans and a t-shirt? Do you wear a coat and tie?

I'd like to find that out. I asked him also, I said, how long do you normally preach? Of course, I just ignore that part. I'd like to know if he preaches in jeans and a t-shirt, then I don't want to come in a coat and tie or vice versa. The reason for that is because in the first place, I want to be sensitive to the culture of that particular environment because I don't want what I'm wearing to be an obstacle to reaching people, but there's something more important than that. Let's say I went into a church where the pastor normally wore a coat and tie and I came in in a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops. Let's say I preached like that and then the Holy Spirit just fell and God just moved and people's lives were touched and people are saved and delivered and people are receiving ministry and a move of God just breaks out in the midst of it. I don't want it to be afterwards that somebody, because somebody would do this, somebody would go up to that home pastor and say, well pastor, you ought to wear a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops. Obviously God moves when somebody preaches wearing a Hawaiian shirt and flip-flops.

Well, that's ridiculous. You don't move God because you got a Hawaiian shirt on or because you got a necktie on. You can preach in shorts and sandals or you can preach in a tuxedo. The move of God and the glories of God and the ministry of the Holy Spirit is not dependent upon any such external form, but instead is all rooted in the sufficiency of Christ and what He's done, right?

We all know that. And so what Paul is saying here is it's not circumcision or circumcision or not. It doesn't matter. The problem is that you're attaching significance, purpose, and power to something that is actually void of all of it. Galatians 6 15, Paul says, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything.

What counts is a new creation. As soon as someone suggests that you aren't qualified because you didn't have all the right clothes, because you didn't eat the right food, because you didn't keep the new festival, because you didn't wear your hair correctly, because you didn't do this, because you didn't do that, then you're robbing the Gospel of its power. You're qualified by Jesus or you're not qualified at all.

And you can't add any additional qualification. He was perfect. He was sinless. He lived a life of perfect obedience unto the Father. He was the Son of God. He's the Son of Man. He died upon a cross so that anyone who trusts in Him would have His sacrifice applied as if you had made it and would have His righteousness applied as if you had lived it. And there is no other way.

So why try to add anything to that? The Judaizers were essentially teaching if you're a Gentile and you become a Christian, you need to get circumcised in order to be fully acceptable to God. And this is just making Paul furious because why, he said to the Galatians, would you start out in the Spirit and then return to this kind of external conformity to laws as if there's some kind of power in that. He says we are the true circumcision.

That's what he's saying here. He said we already are the ones who worship in Spirit and glory in Christ. The ones who are filled with the Spirit, worship in the Spirit, and whose boasting and confidence and glory is in Christ in His finished work and not in ourselves. Allen Wright, in today's teaching, Living by the Spirit Rather than the Flesh. In our series, Unspeakable Joy, Allen is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. CS Lewis said, no soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. In other words, joy isn't an elusive dream reserved for a select few who have no problems or for those who were born with a joyful disposition. Actually, joy is a fruit of the Spirit available to all in Christ. No matter what you're facing, you can have the joy of the Lord in the midst of it.

The Apostle Paul did. Though he wrote his epistle to the Philippians while imprisoned, he spoke of joy 16 times. Allen Wright's newest CD album, The Secret of Unspeakable Joy, takes you chapter by chapter through Paul's explanation of the secret of joy in Philippians. When you make a gift today to Sharing the Light, we'll be delighted to send you the new CD album as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Become a partner today and discover the secrets of unspeakable joy. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Allen, it's like a book I read recently on the Holy Spirit. And as I've heard you ask the question before, why wouldn't everybody want to be filled with the Spirit? And when you talk about joy, it really is something you would ask, why would you rather live in the flesh than by the Spirit? There's something inside all of us that is a little bit drawn to the law.

I mean, it really is. I mean, you think of some of the religious movements and ideologies that you see around the world that actually become popular. And I think of forms of cults and religious movements and even within something like religion of Islam, where there's just so many, many rules.

Why would people be attracted to this? Well, it gives the illusion of control and it gives the illusion of being able to do something to make yourself right with God. It gives the illusion of you can make yourself more blessed. This is what's behind the Judaizers teaching. And that's why Paul is saying, listen, he could have preached the Judaizer sermons better than they did.

He was a Jew of Jew and a Pharisee of Pharisees. And yet that's not the pathway to life. The glory of the gospel is that it really takes you out of the equation because it's about the merits of Jesus. And that's what we're learning about today. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.